How Congress Can Prevent Future Bidens

Biden's decrepitude cried out for the 25th Amendment, but the failure to invoke it shows its defects. Congress can easily fix this.

I wonder if we will ever find a smoking gun email, memorandum, or notes from a meeting of senior White House staff openly discussing the need to keep cabinet members away from President Biden for fear of prompting the cabinet to trigger the 25th Amendment. It might not rise to the level of a crime, but it would be the greatest scandal and cover up of all American presidential history.

If ever there was a case for invoking the 25th Amendment, Biden was it. But the vice president is always going to be under a conflict of interest cloud, given the obvious ambitions of veeps like Kamala. (Or maybe the cabinet shrank from the prospect of “Acting President Kamala Harris.”)

But have a close look at Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which seemingly contemplates this problem, and provides a remedy—if Congress will step up. Pay attention to the bolded/italicized clause:

Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Looks like Congress could appoint something like a standing, five-person panel of doctors who would examine presidents independently of the president’s personal doctor. Congress could also authorize, or even mandate, that this panel be empowered to conduct a cognitive test.

The House and Senate might want to appoint a joint committee, like the special Iran-Contra committee in 1987, to hold extensive hearings about every aspect of this scandal, and don’t excuse news media editors from being asked about their contacts with White House staff, and why they all were in the tank collaborating in the cover up.